Crisis of the Roman Empire
The Crisis of the Roman Empire lasted from about 180 AD until 305 AD. It began with the disastrous reign of Emperor Commodus, which ushered in a tumultuous era for the Roman Empire. It then ended with the reign of Emperor Diocletian, the great stabiliser and reformer (political, economical, social, and military) of the late Roman Empire. The accession of Commodus in 180 AD marked the transition from the golden age of the Roman emperors to ones of rust. His decadent and incompetent reign was followed by a series of dire emperors, ushering in a period of crisis during which the Roman Empire almost collapsed completely. The political and social bonds of the empire began degrading under a combination of pressures, from civil war to economic instability, from plague to near-constant conflict. A resurgent Persia emerged under the Sassanids, who were determined to push their westwards. Another pressure came from the Germanic tribes along the Danube and Rhine frontiers, the most important of whom were the Franks, Goths, and Alemanni. Then at the end of Alexander Severus' reign in 235 AD, the bonds seemed to snap completely, eventually leading to the empire splitting into three independent and competing states. Nevertheless, as a clear sign that the Roman Empire was no longer just an Italian empire, it was a cabal of emperors from Illyria who dragged the empire out of terminal decline, and put her back on top of the geopolitical food-chain. The golden age of Rome was long dead, this was an age of iron, and these were men of iron. Aurelian succeeded in reuniting the fractured empire, and the crises ended with the reign of Diocletian, who reformed almost every aspect of the Roman order; political, economic, social, and military. History Commodus (180-192 AD) Historians conveniently point to Commodus as marking the transition from the golden age of Rome in the 2nd-century AD, to the so called Crisis of the Third Century. But the fact is that most of the seeds had already taken root even before his reign. The migration and consolidation of the Germanic tribes beyond the northern frontier was putting pressure on the legions as never before felt. Further, the Antonine Plague had sapped the strength of the army and civilian population resulting in everything from manpower and food shortages to reduced tax revenue and increased tax burden. Commodus did not cause any of this, but his disastrous reign certainly exacerbated the situation. He was the first Roman Emperor who had been “''born to the purple''”, the natural son of Marcus Aurelius, raised from childhood in the palace, and thus surrounded by all the pleasures that indulgent sycophants could dream up. Of course, the emperors Titus and Domitian had also the sons of an Emperor, but they had both been adults by the time Vespasian ascended to the throne. Historians have long criticised Marcus Aurelius for his decision to break with recent imperial tradition of adopting a worthy heir, and instead handed the Empire over to a son, who even he himself worried could become another Nero. In fairness, Marcus probably had little choice; the risk of civil war was ever present in the Roman Empire, and a bypassed prince would be a potent rallying symbol for any ambitious usurpers. , and even in his lifetime, inflation began to hurt the economy. While the problems Nero had created were quickly reverse by Domitian, this time they would run uncheck, leading to hyper-inflation and the virtual economic breakdown of the Empire. It was only in the early Byzantine era that the Romans fully reestablished a stable currency. ]] Commodus became Emperor after his father's death at the age of just eighteen. He inherited none of his father’s extraordinary work ethic, and indeed seemed to find affairs of state tedious. He happily left the practical running of the Empire to a series of advisors, while he devote himself to more worldly pleasures. Commodus embraced the excitement of the gladiator games like no other emperor before. Despite his reputation, this would make him popular with the masses throughout much of his reign. But it soon became clear that the Roman treasury could not support the Emperor's indulgent lifestyle and lavish games. So he and his advisors turned to the old idea of property confiscate. Beginning in fits-and-starts but then more routinely, wealthy aristocrats were accused of treason and their estates were seized by the Emperor. Commodus' other revenue generating scheme was the regular sale of lucrative offices. Everything from membership of the Senate, to provincial governorships, to plum positions in the imperial bureaucracy had their price; creating political and bureaucratic chaos for fun and profit. It was during his reign that the Senate truly fell into irrelevance, becoming filled with so many reprobates, that it was no longer an assembly that could be ignore, but should justifiably be ignored. The Empire was nevertheless luck during these years, because the Germanic tribes and Parthians had been recently humbled, and the borders were relatively peaceful. The turning point in the reign of Commodus was an attempted assassination by his sister Lucilla in 182 AD. The reason behind the plot seems to have been petty; Lucilla as the daughter of Marcus and widow of Lucius Verus had enjoyed a very privileged position, that was now increasingly being taken by the Emperor’s wife. After the attempt on his life, Commodus’ mild tyranny turned into a paranoid and cruel reign of terror. The immediate aftermath saw the bloodiest round of executions for over a century, and with his paranoia now raging unchecked, these purges would recur periodically every 3 years or so for the rest of his reign. Eventually all the more capable imperial advisors had been caught up in the purges, and the Empire began to fall into chaos with food shortages, financial meltdown, and internal unrest. Commodus himself meanwhile descended fully into a megalomaniacal fantasy-land: he fought as a gladiator in the arena himself against wounded opponents or amputees; claimed to be the reincarnation of the god Hercules; and even tried to rename the city of Rome, Commodiana. Towards the end of his reign, everybody recognised that the man was unhinge, and intrigues and conspiracies abounded. After numerous failed attempts, in 192 AD members of his inner-circle finally managed to kill Commodus, by having his wrestling partner strangle him to death. Year of the Five Emperors (193 AD) As a nod to inflation since the Year of the Four Emperors of 69 AD, the years after 193 AD would see no less than five different men acclaimed Roman Emperor. After the assassination of Commodus, the conspirators hurriedly proclaimed as Emperor an elderly Senator called Pertinax, a former general and governor with a long and distinguished career. Unfortunately, the coup d'etat did not smoothly, and the crass underpinnings of the Praetorian Guard's morality would be on full display in these months. To secure the support of the Praetorians, Pertinax had promised them a huge bonus but soon found that the imperial treasury was empty. 86 days into his reign, tension eventually boiled over when some 300 soldiers of the Guard stormed the imperial palace to confront the Emperor, and one overzealous soldier stabbed him to death. This left the Praetorian Guard in a difficult situation, and the solution they came up with was one of the most notorious incidents in the history of imperial Rome; they auctioned the throne to the highest bidder. The winner was a modestly successful general called Didius Julianus, who was not completely morally bankrupt and was at least in part motivated by the desire to prevent the Empire descending into civil war. But the population of Rome was scandalised by the dishonour brought upon Rome, and the public outrage quickly spread across the Empire. The three most powerful generals in the provinces all refused to recognise this counterfeit emperor: Pescennius Niger of Syria; Clodius Albinus of Britain; and Septimius Severus on the Danube. Septimius Severus was by far the closest to Rome, and as it turned out the most decisive. He immediately marched on Rome with three legions, and, by the time he reached the capital, the Praetorian Guard had murdered Julianus and proclaimed him Emperor. At the same time, he shrewdly took Albinus out of the civil war by promising to adopt the younger man as his heir, thus leaving him free to deal with his more formidable rival Niger. In a campaign in the east, Severus handed out a series of defeats across Thrace and Anatolia, before ultimately defeating Niger at the Battle of Issus (194). Following the fall of Niger, Severus was finally confident enough of his hold on power to drop the pretence that Albinus would succeed him, instead announcing that his own son Caracalla as his heir. This prompted the last phase of the civil war, with Albinus crossing over the English Channel into Gaul with his legions. The war culminated in the Battle of Lugdunum (197 AD), the largest legion-on-legion battle in the whole long history of Rome; over 75,000 men on either side of the battle. After a bloody and drawn-out slug-feast, Albinus was defeated and killed, and Severus’ stood atop the Roman Empire, alone and unchallenged. Septimius Severus (193-211 AD) Septimius Severus '''had no illusions about where his power derived from. He began his reign by almost doubling the pay of all the legions. Previous Emperors ruled as autocrats with the support of the Senate, the Praetorian Guard, and the legions, but Severus established a more fully developed military dictatorship; the legions no longer existed to meet the needs of the state, the state existed to meet the needs of the legions. Meanwhile, the Praetorian Guard, who had murdered Pertinax and sold the throne to the highest bidder, was completely disbanded. In its place was new Guard made up of veterans from the provincial legions; henceforth, the formerly pampered Praetorians became an elite force, membership of which was the ultimate reward for excellent service in the provinces. Severus seems to have found the minutia of civilian administration mind-numbing, and handed over the practical running of the state to the bureaucracy, while eagerly seeking any excuse to go on military campaign. In 198 AD, he campaigned for two years against Parthian Persia, but achieved little. He died in 211 in Britannia during an ill-advised and futile attempt to conquer Scotland. Caracalla (211–217 AD) Septimius Severus was once quoted as condemning Marcus Aurelius for not smothering Commodus with a pillow, so it’s not without irony that his own son and heir was '''Caracalla. Caracalla was initially proclaimed co-emperor with his younger brother Geta. However, fear of their father had been the only thing holding the feuding of the brothers in check. When their mother attempted to broker a peace between them, Caracalla had his brother murdered in front of her. He then unleashed a reign of terror against his brother’s supporters, friends and associates; a purge that in both breadth and depth far exceeded anything any Roman had even contemplated. Then in 213 AD, he decided to take his bloody show on the road, in a debauched tour of the provinces. It culminated in Alexandria, where a satire had been produced by the inhabitants mocking the emperor’s denial that he murdered his brother. When Caracalla arrived in 215 AD, he responded by ordering a general slaughter and looting of the city; perhaps 20,000 citizens were killed. Then in 216 AD, Caracalla proposed to marry the daughter of the king of Parthian Persia to secure a lasting friendship between the two great empires. When the Parthian king refused the transparent attempt to bring Persia under Roman control, Caracalla used it as a pretext for another brief and pointless war, that ended with the Romans having to pay a huge sum in war reparations. The emperor finally met his inevitable violent and ignoble end in 217 AD, when the head of the Praetorian Guard arranged for him to be stabbed to death. Elagabalus (218-222 AD) The lowly Praetorian Prefect who had arranged for the death of Caracalla, ruled himself as emperor for a brief time. However, the Severan family soon successfully instigated a revolt against him in favour of Caracalla's fourteen years old cousin, Elagabalus. Elagabalus was not the first emperor to be born in the east, but he was the first Roman Emperor who was actually culturally eastern. Steeped in the oriental idea of the divine monarch, he outraged Rome with his disregard for Roman traditions: he dressed in eastern style with perfume; lavished favours on male courtiers who most assumed were his homosexual lovers; eventually married a vestal virgin claiming the marriage would produce "godlike" children; and tried to replace Jupiter as the head of the Roman pantheon with his own eastern Sun God. Elagabalus' eccentricities finally provoked the Praetorian Guard to assassinate him in 222 AD. Alexander Severus (222–235 AD) Even before Elagabalus' death, the Severan family already had another young cousin lined up to be his successor. Although, Alexander Severus ascended to the throne at just fourteen, he ruled for over a decade with something approaching competence. A governing committed of well-respected Senators was established, and thanks to their wise council the empire prospered in many ways. Nevertheless, even in this relatively peaceful part of his reign there were signs that the empire was lapsing into lawlessness. In 224 AD, the Praetorian Guard murdered an unpopular imperial advisor in front of the emperor, despite the emperor's impotent pleas. In 229 AD, the Praetorians forced out another of his advisors, the famous senator and historian Cassius Dio. It was his incompetence as a military leader that was Alexander’s undoing. From 231 AD the Roman Empire was rocked by a series of foreign threats that almost led to its collapse. A resurgent Persia had emerged under Ardashir, who overthrew the Parthian royal dynasty and founded Sassanid Persia (224-651); the Parthians had never fully recovered from Trajan's Parthian War (115-117 AD). The conscious dynamism that the Sassanid monarchy brought to Persia, meant there was not a decade without war for the rest of the century. When the Sassanids began raiding across the frontier into Syria, Alexander's military proved disastrous, largely due to the emperor's own dithering leadership. Then the bedraggled legions returned to their garrisons on the Danube, to learned learn that Germanic tribes had taken the opportunity of their absence to cross the frontier and raid Roman settlements. By now Alexander’s reputation as a coward dominated by inappropriate advisors was widespread in the legions, and the last straw came when the emperor tried to buy-off the Germanic tribes to stop raiding. Considered this dishonourable, the legions under general Maximinus Thrax murdered Alexander and his advisors. Maximinus Thrax to Decius (235-251 AD) The three decades between 235 and 268 AD were the rock-bottom years for the Crisis of the Third Century. For some time, the political, economic and social bonds of the Roman Empire had been degrading, under a string of woeful emperors. With the death of Alexander Severus, they seemed to snap completely. For the next thirty years, the loyalty of the legions would turn on a dime, and imperial usurpers would pop-up with alarming frequency. Those provinces not ravaged directly by marauding barbarians, would suffer from plague, famine, economic depression, and hyper-inflation. People often ask why the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, but a more interesting question is, how on earth it managed to survive these years of chaos. Immediately after Alexander’s death, Maximinus Thrax (235-238) became emperor, whose reign was marked by another doubling of the pay for the legions, paid for by an extreme hikes in provincial taxation. Opposition to him eventually coalesced into an alliance of three men; Pupienus a renowned general, Balbinus a well-respected senator, and young Gordian III the heir of an earlier revolt. Thrax, wintering on the Danude, immediately tried to march on Rome, but found his forces blocked by obstinate resistance in the Po valley. Unable to break the impasse, Thrax began taking-out his frustration on his own men, who promptly assassinated him. Despite their victory, Pupienus and Balbinus immediately turned-on each other. With the prospect of another civil war descending on Rome, the Praetorian Guard assassinated them both, allowing the supposedly junior partner Gordian III (238-244 AD) to emerge as the sole-emperor. The reign of young Gordian brought an uneasy peace for a while, largely due to his well-respected step-father Timesitheus. When Timesitheus died in 243 during another campaign against Sassanid Persia, Gordian III himself was dead within a year; the fact that none of the historical source explain how and why the the emperor died just goes to should how chaotic these crisis years were. In the aftermath, the head of the Praetorian Guard, Marcus Julius Philippus or Philip the Arab (244–249) ascended to the throne. The high point of his reign was presided over the magnificent Saeculare Games in 248 AD, commemorating one-thousand years since the founding of the city of Rome. Nonetheless, within months the revolt erupted among the Danube legions that would eventually lead to his downfall. Philip sent the trusted senator Gaius Decius to quell the revolt. He promptly joined the revolt, marched on Rome, and overthrew Philip. The solution of Decius (249-251 AD) to all of Rome’s problems was the restoration the public piety to the Roman gods, including a brutal persecution of Christians. On this occasion the gods were certainly not listening, because the crisis years were suddenly turning into a truly existential emergency with the emergence of the Goths. The origin of the ancient Goths remains unknown, but they where the first of the super coalitions of Germanic tribes, no longer content with hit-and-run raiding; in time the Goths would split into two main branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths. The Goths became more and more daring, until from 250 AD, they launched a series of massive incursions across the Danube, deep into the Balkans to raid and plunder. That same year, the Cyprian Plague swept across the Roman Empire, and would continue ravaging the territory for the next twenty years, causing widespread manpower shortages, not just for the legions but even for food production. Decius himself would earn the dubious honour of becoming the first emperor to die on the battlefield at the Battle of Abritus (August, 251 AD), where three full legions were soundly defeated by the Goths. To add to the empire's woes, Sassanid Persia would begin raiding into Syria again from 253 AD, sacking important cities including the capital itself, Antioch. Valerian and Gallienus (253–268) After a series of short-lived emperors, Valerian (253-260 AD) eventually ascended to the throne. However by this time, the frontiers were a sieve, and, wherever the emperor wasn’t, foreign enemies flooded in. In 257 AD, the Franks, another confederacy of western Germanic tribes, cross the Rhine and sacked the deep into the interior of the Roman Empire, as far as in northern Hispania. At this point in history, the Franks were just another collection of Germanic peoples, but to a large extent they would be the ultimate inheritors of the Western Roman Empire: the name France comes from the Latin of their name; Charlemagne (d. 814 AD) was a Frank; and the Mongols in the 13-14th centuries used the term "Franks" to designate all Europeans. In another dubious first, Valerian became the first emperor to be captured alive on the battlefield, while campaigning against Sassanid Persia in 259 AD. He was succeeded by his son Gallienus (260-268), who was given no time to consider the sad fate of his father. While the Franks marauded across the lower Rhine, another group the Alemanni poured across the upper Rhine and made directly for Italy itself. Gallienus' decision for focus on driving the Alemanni out of the home peninsula was understandable, but it left all the other embattled frontiers of the empire feeling abandoned by the emperor. The ultimate result was the disintegration of the Roman Empire. An eminently capable general called Latinius Postumus was proclaimed emperor in 260 AD in Gaul, Britannia and Hispania. Rather than marching on Rome as every other usurper had, Postumus instead pledged to protect the west from invaders, and secede from the Rome, creating an independent Western Empire. The same thing happened in the east, where Syria, Palestine and Egypt ceding as an Eastern Empire under leadership of Odaenathus. Odaenathus was a unique individual in Roman history, because he was technically a foreign prince from the allied kingdom of Palmyra. However, he proved himself the only man capable of keeping Sassanid Persia at bay. Thus, the Roman Empire was now split into three independent states, and would remain so for over a decade. Nevertheless it proved in the long-run crucial to the ultimate survival of the empire. Each individual state was able to focus on just one troublesome border: the Rhine River for the Western Empire; the Danube River for the Central Empire; and the border with Sassanid Persia for the Eastern Empire. Gallienus was much maligned by Roman historians for allowing the empire to disintegrate, but his reign was in fact moderately successful. It was Gallienus who first introduced the military innovation of a large and highly mobile cavalry legion, which would prove vital to Claudius Gothicus and his successors in slowly dragging the Roman Empire out of terminal decline. Yet, Gallienus also dramatically debased the Roman currency leading to the chronic hyper-inflation that would dog the empire for many decades. He was eventually murder by his own legions. As with so many events during the crisis years, there are differing accounts of the murder and the motive of the conspirators. Claudius Gothicus (268-270 AD) Naturally for these troubled times, the senior ranking general of the Central Empire was proclaimed emperor, Claudius Gothicus, the commander of the all-important cavalry legion. For a man like Claudius from peasant-stock in a poor province, the crisis years had been a period when anything became possible. They could rise on merit through the ranks of the legions right to the very top, in much the same way as non-Patricians had risen during the Punic Wars. He was from the Illyria, and as he climbed the ranks, he dragged up beneath him a cabal of fellow Illyrian officers, who by this time had secured considerable control over the military apparatus throughout the Central Empire. Inch by inch, and mile by mile, it was Claudius Gothicus and his fellow Illyrian emperors who would pull the empire out of its decline, and put it back on top of the geopolitical food-chain. At the time of Claudius' ascension, the Central Empire was in serious danger from several incursions. The most pressing of these was an invasion of the Balkans by the Goths. He and his legions immediately delivered a crushing rout to a huge Gothic army at the Battle of Naissus (269 AD); nearly a century would pass before the Goths again posed a serious threat. While Claudius was on the Danube, the Alemanni again crossed the Rhine and made for the Alps into northern Italy. However, the imperial army swept back and crushed them in turn at the Battle of Lake Benacus (269 AD). With these two victories, a clear demonstration had been made to the world that the Roman Empire was still a force to be reckoned with, so much so that Hispania soon switched its allegiance from the Western Empire back to Rome. However, Claudius did not live long enough to fulfil his dream of reuniting all the splintered empire. After just two years on the throne, he fell victim to the Cyprian Plague and died. Aurelian (270-275 AD) Claudius was almost seamlessly succeeded by another Illyrian, his second in command Aurelian; the Senate did briefly try to raise Claudius’ younger brother to the purple, but neither Aurelian nor the legions paid them much mind. He was known for being tough, humourless, disciplined, and an exemplary general; the perfect man for the job that lay ahead. The Golden Age of Rome was long dead, this was an age of iron, and Aurelian was a man of iron. During the brief turmoil of the transition, another Germanic group, the Vandals, crossed the Danube and began running amuck in the Balkans, while the Alemanni yet again made for the Alps. The strategy that Aurelian implemented for dealing with both these threats would become the standard imperial tactics throughout the late Roman Empire. The Roman citizens and all provisions were withdrawn within the walled towns and cities of the provinces. Thus, the barbarians, with no siege-craft, were left with nothing to plunder. Once lack of provisions began to drag them down, Aurelian swept-in with his cavalry legion, and crushed both the Vandals and the Alemanni in turn. Aurelian himself oversaw the construction of great city-walls around Rome; the famous ramparts known as Aurelian’s Wall. He also formally abandoned the exposed province of Dacia on the north bank of the Danube; its rich gold mines having already been exhausted. Confident that he had set the Central Empire on the path to true security, Aurelian turned to economic reform. Agriculture and commerce had suffered disruption from the instability, but the most severe problem was hyperinflation caused by debased coinage; for years each of the short-lived emperors needed ways to raise money quickly to pay the military. Aurelian dealt with the corruption that had been running rife in the imperial mint, and then withdrew the debased coinage introduced by Gallienus, and minted his own new purer coins. To give an idea of the severity of the economic situation that Aurelian faced, even his new coins were only worth one twentieth of the old silver denarius. Nevertheless, inflation would continue largely unabated; Diocletian (d. 311 AD), Constantine (d. 337 AD), Anastasius (d. 518 AD) all introduced major currency reforms before the problems subsided. Throughout their long history, the Romans never achieved a particularly strong understanding of economics. In 272, Aurelian turned his attention to the lost eastern provinces of the empire. In the Eastern Empire, Odaenathus had always maintained a subtle façade that his authority was somehow subordinate to the emperor in Rome. However, when he died in 267 AD, his formidable widow Zenobia stepped into the power vacuum, who clearly dreamed of a permanent independent state. When Zenobia formally annexed Egypt in 270 AD, there was no doubt that the two powers were headed for war. In 272 AD, Aurelian marched his legions east. Crossing Syria, almost all the cities opening their gates to him without a fight. The few cities that did try to hold-out, soon fell before the legions, but contrary to his fearsome reputation, Aurelian treated them with considerable clemency. Only in Antioch and Emesa were battles needed, and Aurelian defeated the Palmyrene armies with ease. The war culminated at Palmyra itself, which was put to siege. In desperation, Zenobia tried to flee into Sassanid Persia to seek an alliance with the Persians, but she was captured en-route. She would eventually be paraded through Rome in chains at Aurelian’s Triumph. The Eastern Empire was now back under Roman control, although a revolted a year later would force Aurelian to return to the east. This time his fearsome reputation was on full display; the great city of Palmyra was razed to the ground. Aurelian could now finally turn his full attention to the lost western territories. When Postumus died in 269 AD, the Western Empire was ruled by a series of short-lived and ineffectual leaders. In the end, all Aurelian had to do was march west and accept the surrender of Gaul and Britannia. His achievement in reuniting the Roman Empire earned Aurelian the title Invictus Restitutor Orbis; the Unconquered Restorer of the World. Despite this lofty title, he suffered an ignoble end, assassinated by a corrupt administrator who feared being exposed. Aurelian made one other important contribution to the late Roman Empire. He strengthened the position of the sun-god Sol Invictus within the Roman pantheon, in order to give all the peoples of the empire, civilian or soldiers, easterners or westerners, a single god they could believe in without betraying their own gods. The centre of the cult was a new temple in Rome, built in 274 with the Palmyrene spoils. This was an important step for the Roman Empire as it transitioned from traditional polytheism towards monotheism, and towards the principle of "one faith, one empire", which would not be made official until the Edict of Thessalonica; the solstice festival to Sol Invictus of 25 December is the origin of Christmas. Marcus Aurelius Probus (276-282 AD) Aurelian’s death sent an emotional shockwave through the Roman Empire, and ushered in a rather bizarre succession crisis where no one seemed to want to seize the purple. After a series of short-lived emperors, one of Aurelian's key generals ascended to the throne, Marcus Aurelius Probus, one of the last men to hold the distinction of being sole master of the Roman Empire. This third in the succession of emperors of Illyrian stock very much carried on the policies of Aurelian. It was during his reign that after nearly five decades of turmoil, the Rhine and Danube frontiers finally settled into an uneasy peace, and Persia was a significantly less potent threat after the death of Shapur (d. 272 AD), the second of the Sassanid dynasty. For the moment it seemed that the empire was at something resembling peace. There are even reports of legions engaging in peacetime infrastructure project again. Like Aurelian, Probus also die of another pointless assassination; there are differing accounts of his murder. Diocletian (284-305 AD) After another brief interlude of short-lived emperors, yet another of the Illyrian cabal ascended to the purple; Diocletian. Historians generally mark this as the end of the crisis years, for by the end of his reign, almost every aspect of the Roman order – political, military, economic, and social – would be transformed by his policies. Diocletian had risen through the ranks of the legions alongside his Illyrian countrymen as they secured control of the state. However, unlike Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus, he was no renowned general, but merely an unusually well-connected and politically astute senior officer. Diocletian came to power with the idea firmly in mind that the job of emperor was now too big for just one man. So he gradually established the Tetrarchy, a form of government where power was shared between four individuals, all men of strong practical experience who had proven themselves in military service: Diocletian and Maximian would be co-Augustus or senior emperors; and Galerius and Constantius were co-Caesar, junior emperors and heirs. Each co-emperor had a sphere of influence over a quarter of the empire, although they freely shifted between spheres as the situation required. Any victories in battle would be shared by all four men, lest rivalries develop. To establish the legitimacy of this new regime, rather than relying purely on support of the legions as happened during the crisis years, Diocletian couched their rule in religious terms. He himself claimed to be divinely appointed by Jupiter the head of the Roman pantheon, while Maximian was styled Hercules the semi-divine hero of mankind; this also subtly reinforced Diocletian as the senior of the emperors. Thus the Roman Empire was no longer the quasi-republican magisterial dictatorship of Augustus (the Principate), instead it was quasi-divine monarchy (the so-called Dominate). The quartet of co-emperors were faced with numerous military challenges. In 287 AD, Carausius, an enigmatic Roman general turned brigand and pirate, broke-way from Rome in the province of Britannia. As an excellent general with an outstanding navy, as well as a capable administrator, his little kingdom was near impregnable. It would take nine years, and one disastrous failed invasion, to reconquer Britannia, and then only after the death of Carausius in 293 AD. Meanwhile in the east in 296 AD, war yet again broke out between Rome and Sassanid Persia. The Romans suffered an early crushing defeat at the Battle of Carrhae (296 AD), but as has been seen time and time again, the Romans only took defeat as a setback on the road to eventual victory. At the Battle of Satala (298 AD), not only were the Sassanid army cut to pieces, but the royal treasury and the kings harem and wives were captured; the seizure of the royal household was said to have balanced the scales for the capture alive of Emperor Valerian in 259 AD. In the aftermath, Diocletian negotiated a new peace agreement, with the Sassanids ceding key strategic strongholds on the Tigris River to Roman control. The peace brokered in 299 AD would last for nearly forty years. Diocletian saw his work as that of a restorer, whose duty it was to recreate stability and justice in the empire, where barbarian hordes had destroyed it. His reforms of the Roman imperial government were on a scale not seen since Augustus. Diocletian completely reassessed the Roman military posture. He restructured the divisions of the empire, doubling the number of provinces and creating a ring of small militarised districts around the frontiers. In the process, he reduced the number of legions under each general, thus discouraging future large-scale revolts. He also formally split the legions into two distinct forces: a static militia tasked with monitoring the frontiers; and highly mobile legions to envelop intruders and overwhelm them from all sides. Meanwhile, the inner districts were to act solely as the economic engine of the empire. During the crisis years, many of the normal functions of government had fallen by the wayside. Diocletian re-established a rigidly-hierarchical and effective bureaucracy for the collection of taxes, administration of justice, and maintenance of the infrastructure. Everywhere was treated equally, including those regions that had traditionally been unique like Egypt and Italy itself. When it came to economic reform, Diocletian introduced an ingenious and fair tax system, based on an extensive and regular census of the empire's population and wealth. In this way, he managed to extract resources from his subjects on a scale previously unimagined. Not all of his reforms were successful. Probus' attempt to reform the currency had had little effect on inflation, so Diocletian further improved the quality of the coinage, but there were simply too many of the old coins in circulation. When inflation continued unabated, he tried to introduce an edict of maximum price on some one thousand goods and services, but it proved unenforceable and ultimately counter-productive. Late in his reign, Diocletian enacted a policy that would stain his otherwise stellar reputation; the 'Great Persecution of Christians '(303-05 AD). Over the last two-centuries, Christianity had grown steadily throughout the empire. By Diocletian's day, it was no longer merely the religion of the downtrodden (slaves, women, and lower ranking soldiers), but was embraced by nearly 10% of the Roman population of all classes. What troubled Diocletian most about Christianity was just how structured the Church was; the interconnected network of bishops had an institutionalised authority that in the minds of many Christians was above the states. In 303 AD, Diocletian launched the empire's largest, bloodiest, and last official persecution of Christianity. Many non-Christian Romans were horrified at what the state was doing to a seemingly harmless cult, best known for charitable endeavors such as tending to the poor and the sick. In the end, the persecution failed to check the rise of the Church, and only disrupted the stability of the empire that Diocletian had spent the last twenty years establishing. In 305, in an almost unprecedented act, Diocletian voluntarily abdicated the throne; something that had not been seen in Roman history since Sulla in 79 BC. In a carefully orchestrated succession, that he hoped would secure the future of his governing system, he insisted that his fellow Augustus abdicate at the same time, thus allowing the two junior emperors to step-up at the same time as heads of the Tetrarchy. At the same time, he very deliberately selected two capable men who were not natural sons as the new Caesars. It was a decision that he would live long enough in retirement to regret, seeing the Tetrarchy torn apart by the machinations of two ambitious sons who felt themselves overlooked. Thus the Roman Empire was once again plunged into the kind of civil war, that Diocletian had schemed so carefully to prevent. Category:Historical Periods